EMC, IBM, Microsoft Target Interoperability Of ECM Systems

EMC, IBM and Microsoft have announced a jointly developed specification that uses Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to enable applications to interoperate with multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repositories by different vendors. The companies intend to submit the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification to the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for advancement through its rigorous standards development process.

The ultimate goal of CMIS is to reduce the IT burden around multi-vendor, multi-repository content management environments. Currently, customers must spend valuable time and money to create and maintain custom integration code and one-off integrations to get different ECM systems within their organisations to ’talk’ to one another. The specification will also benefit independent software vendors (ISVs) by enabling them to create specialised applications that are capable of running over a variety of content management systems.

Working together since late 2006, the three companies were joined in the creation of the CMIS draft specification by other leading software providers including: Alfresco Software, Open Text, Oracle and SAP. A final gathering of all seven companies was recently held to validate interoperability of the specification before submission to OASIS.

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“Many companies today are struggling with how to unlock the full value of their data when they have multiple content management solutions dispersed throughout their organisation. Currently, ‘marrying’ these into one integrated system — or migrating content between systems — costs the IT department a lot in time and money,” said Melissa Webster, programme vice president, Content and Digital Media Technologies at IDC. “Given the need for a common standard that will enable customers to access disparate repositories, this announcement certainly seems like a positive step in the right direction.”

“For some time now, the world of content management has been evolving from separate application platforms to an integral part of a company’s information infrastructure,” said Razmik Abnous, vice president and chief technology officer, Content Management and Archiving Division at EMC. “As content management rapidly becomes a key piece of a company’s business process, there’s a heightened need for interoperability between the vast and diverse sources that manage this content. Today’s agreement is a major step forward in achieving this goal.”

“By working together to define the CMIS standard, IBM, Microsoft and EMC are clearly putting the needs of all customers first in this important technology area. We have worked hard to develop a standard that continues IBM’s efforts to leverage the principles of SOA and Web 2.0 interfaces to benefit the industry as a whole,” said Ken Bisconti, vice president, Products and Strategy, IBM Enterprise Content Management.

“The real winner in today’s announcement is the customer,” said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the Office Business Platform, Office SharePoint Server Group at Microsoft. “Today’s businesses are driven by information. When companies operate in silos, with information scattered throughout the enterprise, it becomes extremely difficult for customers to realise its full value. By working together, we believe we can enable customers to maximise the use of critical business assets.”

Key to the new specification, EMC, IBM and Microsoft worked together to define an interface that does the following:

-- Is designed to work over existing repositories enabling customers to build and leverage applications against multiple repositories — unlocking content they already have

-- De-couples Web services and content from the content management repository, enabling customers to manage content independently

-- Provides common Web services and Web 2.0 interfaces to dramatically simplify application development

-- Is development platform and language agnostic

-- Supports composite application development and mash-ups by the business or IT analyst

-- Grows the ISV and developer community

Laurent Liscia, executive director of OASIS said, “We look forward to furthering the evolution of CMIS from specification to standard and to promoting the broadest possible industry adoption through education and implementation efforts.”